Scientists studying the Gulf of Mexico say it could be a decade or more before there is a solid verdict on the impact of the 2010 BP oil spill.

\u201cLook at this oil\u2026\u201d

In the meantime, gathering the data from across the giant area impacted by the oil is a bit like fitting pieces of a puzzle together\u2013 without a guide to the finished product.

\u201cSee that oil?.... This is all oil\u2026 this is one year after the spill\u2026\u201d

Much of the data is going into the U.S government coordinated \u201cNatural Resources Damage Assessment,\u201d which will guide legal action against BP and other responsible parties. And some scientists are suggesting further steps to ensure a complete picture.

A team at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida, is hunting for \u2013 and finding \u2013 oil with a different technique than the standard water, sediment and air samples.

They deploy passive collectors \u2013 which basically look like little metal boxes \u2013 for four weeks at a time at spots within the Gulf Coast region. It\u2019s what is inside the boxes that is special\u2026

\u201cThese samplers are made of pieces of dialysis tubing, and inside that tubing is some material that\u2019s made from fat \u2013 lipid, it\u2019s actually called triolein \u2013 and it represents what is found normally, naturally in an organism. We all have lipid reserves in our body. And contaminants, organic contaminants like petroleum, prefer to congregate where there is lipid.\u201d

Wetzel says such \u201csentinel samplers\u201d have been finding oil in waters where traditional testing has not. She compares the tried and true method of gathering a few liters of water

from a site for later testing to a snapshot, that may not catch the overall story.

SOUNDBITE: Wetzel

\u201cIf you\u2019ve only got low levels of petroleum floating around out there, you may not find any in that water sample. But that doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that\u2019s the level that an organism is exposed to because they\u2019re filtering that water through their bodies. They\u2019re collecting little parts and parcels of petroleum their whole life if they\u2019re exposed to it their whole life. And so, trying to develop technology that looks at a broader time series is much better for understanding the exposure to organisms.\u201d

As Wetzel\u2019s team analyzes samples from their fieldwork, they\u2019re urging NRDA to use similar techniques to broaden the data coming in. It\u2019s that collaborative approach, with each scientist filling in a blank in data collection that Mote\u2019s president says is essential to properly evaluating the condition of the Gulf.

SOUNDBITE: Kumar Mahadevan, Mote Marine Lab President and CEO

\u201cScientists are specialized. Depending on their expertise, their work in particular areas and those are important components of the overall ecosystem. So every piece needs to come together. And it is important for the scientists to talk to each other because then we would not know about the overall ecosystem.\u201d

Halfway across the Gulf, scientists at the University of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast Research Laboratory are tackling questions of what happened to the oil and what it\u2019s doing to the Gulf ecosystem.

A team led by Chet Rakocinski is sorting through samples of organisms taken from the Gulf Islands National Seashore. They have data from surveys of the islands going back 14 years.

\u201cFor most environmental impact studies, the classic term that\u2019s used is before, after, control, impact. Where you have before samples, after samples, sort of reference areas and then impact areas. And, if you\u2019ve framed it that way, usually you have the strongest evidence of something happening from that particular impact that you\u2019re concerned with. In our case, we feel that we have a pretty good handle on a lot of that\u2026\u201d

By following the same methodology they\u2019ve long used, Rakocinski\u2019s team should be able to sort out any changes tied to the oil.

In a nearby lab, microbiologists are looking at vibrio - a genus of bacteria some of which thrive on \u2018eating\u2019 oil. Some vibrios, like cholera, also cause human infections. Jay Grimes specializes in vibrios and early on was concerned that spikes in bacteria populations feeding on the oil plumes could contain high levels of dangerous Vibrio microbes.

\u201cYes, there were blooms. These blooms happen very very rapidly when oil comes into the seawater. Within 24 to 48 hours you will get anywhere from a thousand-fold to a million-fold increase of the bacteria that can decompose oil. Most of these bacteria have not yet been cultured. We only know them by their DNA signatures. So, we do not know how to grow them, mother nature does know how.\u201d

Grimes says vibrios ended up being only a minor part of the bacteria consuming the oil. But the tiny microbes, like the giant Gulf, need sustained attention to ensure scientists catch early warning signs\u2026 or discover a promising lead on how to deal with any future spill.